Today's online environment enables a vast number of users to access network resources. Examples of such network resources include websites, shopping sites, social networking sites, content distribution sites, and so on. One consequence of this vast number of users is that a popular network resource can receive a tremendous amount of traffic over a short period time. Such increased traffic can strain the ability of a network resource to satisfy access requests.
For example, consider a scenario where a new shopping website is being launched. If a number of requests to access the new shopping website exceeds the ability of the shopping website to process and/or satisfy the requests, some or all of the requests may fail. Further, resources associated with the shopping website (e.g., network resources) may also fail.